Bittersweet
by Purple Wolf Girl
Summary: When Starfire finally makes her move, Robin does not take it as planned...and cannot seem to face this bittersweet rejection. RxS. ONESHOT.


**Author's Note:** Okay, so…yes, this is another chapter reposted from "Love me Senseless". I'm not gonna type another stupidly long note, but I really hope you enjoy this oneshot and that you review.

-Purple Wolf Girl

**Summary:** _Love…it's intoxicating and deadly when you fall for the right person at the wrong time. The first decided to take a chance, and the second rejected it, despite strong feelings. Will their infatuation ever resume? RobStar. ONESHOT._

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Teen Titans or any related terms, including Batman. But I own every single word in my stories, and I own my stories (duh).

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_You're so close…_

_I can't breathe…_

_I cannot utter a word…_

_You are intoxicating._

Robin ran his hand through his hair. The cold, lifeless sweat trickled down his ghostly face and a vein throbbed viciously in his head. His temple was pounding; begging for mercy. His racing heart thrashed against his rib cage. His bones were so brittle…so fragile. He wasn't who he had been before. She had been too close, too tempting…so poisonous. She wasn't innocent. She was a bittersweet toxin that slowly and cruelly pushed him over the edge. He was losing his footing. The earth was crumbling beneath him…he would fall…and no one would catch him.

She was not who she always played in her own private script. There must have been typos somewhere—anywhere. She couldn't really be this person. She wasn't who he had fallen voluntarily for. She wasn't the serenity and fantasy that clouded his mind when he tried to find the sweetness of sleep deep into the hours. There were whispers of fear and affection whenever he thought of her. She was beautiful…so, so seemingly innocent and unknowing. She was slightly childlike…and yet quite mature for her age. He loved her.

But he couldn't catch himself when he fell to his fate. It was all so unfathomable; She was. His love. His passion. Fear. Her sudden loss of innocence and her sudden intoxication. All so unfathomable. So little time to understand. He could feel the blankets and sheets melting off of his bed like an old candle lit by a fading flame. His feet were bare, his arms were exposed…he felt as if he were lying underneath mountains of Artic snow. He was suffocating on the delicate flakes. They all began to crowd together until his slender frame was engulfed…swallowed. He could hear her. She was calling for him. She desired him, but he couldn't give himself away. She didn't need him. He couldn't want her in return. It was toxic. It drowned him in rivers of grief and his nightmarish emotions stole his breath while he slept. He tried to pull the blankets over his shaking body. They were sunken into the floor. Out of his reach again…he had nothing to break his fall.

_I can't want you…_

_You don't need me…_

_I'm not perfection…_

_I am going to crumble._

He paced the floor. He felt the freezing air drift in between the small area of his toes and he eavesdropped on the cackles of the cruel temptation that had practically formed him into a 24-hour insomniac. He couldn't crawl back into the fate he had dubbed his bed. No dreams would frolic in his mind. Only crazed images of her sobbing from his panicked rejection with her burning face buried into her hands. Her crimson hair would fall down to her hips and gently brush against them…softly…slowly. Her ivy eyes would drown in their own salty tears, and all that would result in the morning would be a floor paved in dirty tissues and pieces of a heart to sweep up with a crooked broom. He didn't want to be the man who had shattered her spirit. He _could _go down the hall. He _could_ easily knock on the door. He _could _finally collapse in her arms and experience the guilty pleasure of her kiss. She knew she wanted him to be brave enough to do that, but he knew that the moment he opened his door, she would already be waiting in the hall, sitting on the floor, and preparing ahead of time. Robin wasn't one to take risks in his own personal affairs. When it came to locking up a criminal, he would jump at the chance and go nuts. But when it came to things like his 'Love Life', he hesitated…a lot. She was so fragile. It was like picking up a butterfly with one wing and crinkled antennae. Once, that creature was in perfect condition. But someone careless had twisted it, and its delicate balance crumbled around it. That was the situation Robin was frozen in. He was stuck on a platform levitated up past the stars and sliver moon. He was hanging on for dear life, but was also taking another life with him. His own skin might be saved, but his admirer's perspective would be blinded…just like the battered butterfly.

She was so wonderful…so full of life and energy. Robin now gained the feeling that he had drained her of all that. Her mascara would be smudged around her eyes from all of the tears. Her slim form would be curled up in a ball in the corner as she trembled from the unsatisfying surprise of the first rejection of her affection she had ever faced. Most guys would kill for the opportunity of even just a glance or the rare bonus of her famous smile. Robin received those gestures many times a day. He was the only one she looked so fondly at. She yearned for him. He could see it…and it terrified him. Whenever he rushed by, she would pleasantly inhale the scent of his cologne…whenever he decided to splash some on here and there. It smelled of an assortment of things that Raven described as, "A big pile of crap that they somehow managed to cram into a cheap bottle," and a mix of his own sweat after a long battle with one villain or another. Beast Boy would stick his nose up in the air or play dead in the form of a dog. Cyborg would claim that the mixture of 'crap' and B.O. was enough to shatter his circuits. Raven would just light dozens of lavender candles.

Her smile shook him. It could be subtle and sensitive, or insane and lively. He used to admire her for how she wasn't just one person. But she wasn't playing pretend with him. She was who she was, and she refused to be anyone else, no matter how much pressure was piled on top of her to be. She would give Robin flirtatious hints once in a long while. She would laugh at his comments…despite the fact that they were either pointless or dull or if they were just intended to be taken seriously. She would flip her hair even if it was already where she wanted it and she would make a point of walking in front of him just so, in case of the off chance, he might look at her in a different way than a friend.

_You're so beautiful…_

_I'm broken…_

_We're fooling each other…_

_We are going to shatter._

Robin was already teetering on the edge of his despair. He had been since the day his parents met their demise and he was forced to move in with Bruce Wayne. Bruce was Batman, and Richard became Robin. It felt naïve to be so trusting of Bruce at first. He wasn't an extremely warm person, and usually handed out a cold shoulder in the morning. That was partly why Robin had become so serious. Half was because of his deceased parents and the final half was growing up with Batman himself. Bruce suddenly greeting the urge to go down to the Batcave or how they were going to find the latest criminal in Gotham often cut off the awkward subjects and/or pauses at the dinner table. Robin couldn't be happy-go-lucky anymore. He was going to follow in Bruce's steps whether he desired to or not.

His back ached. The sensations of fear and despair overwhelmed him. He could almost taste the bitterness of a dying soul…His life flickered like a candle flame. His stomach groaned uncomfortably and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled with the excitement of what could have been. What could still be if he didn't have a conscience or if Bruce's stern voice hadn't been cussing at him like a drunken sailor? Robin smirked at his own expense. Most boys his age would have leapt at the chance to kiss a pretty girl…especially one so innocent and one so easy to deceive. But he wasn't the depth of a shallow pothole in a path. And he certainly wasn't about to wallow in the amount of pity and disappointment his hormones threw his way.

He halted himself and stopped pacing the floor. He smirked once more…the corner of his lips twitching upward until it formed a nasty little grin. She had made the first move. Why was he worried? His conscience was clear. She wasn't naïve. She was smarter and more forward than he had assumed. They were just walking through the hallways…talking…laughing…

…Then she kissed him. She put her hand on the back of his neck and reeled him in like some kind of fish. She had been taking a longer time getting ready lately. She began spraying herself with sweet smelling fragrances and dabbed on a touch of lip-gloss here and there. She had been planning it. He didn't know how long she had been plotting to lip-lock with him right on the spot…but she did it. It drove him absolutely mad.

She loved him. He loved her in return. It was a forbidden infatuation, but she had peeled the warning label off the poison vile for a moment…just long enough to prove her disregard for the rules on falling in love with your leader. He absorbed every drip of venom that laid within her kiss. He loathed the knowledge that he would have to pull away before it carried on any further. He tried as hard as he possibly could to restrain his arms from wrapping around her. He simply stood there, nearly pressed against the wall. He looked dumbstruck. His mask was up to his hairline; In such an expression that one would make if they won the lottery or if they were just told that the entire planet was about to submerge completely in water and sink into space.

He tugged away after a few moments, which seemed to carry on for an everlasting eternity. But, really, the event only made a small wrinkle in time.

She looked as surprised and disappointed as he did. Her expression almost looked as if she were about to cry hysterically or collapse on the floor. Robin wobbled slightly as he stepped away from her. She put her fist to her mouth and chewed her tongue in anticipation. He raised his brows at her, and she made no reaction or complaint. She just…stared.

"_Starfire?"_ Robin had said weakly.

She shook her head. "_I have done wrong_,"

He couldn't say she hadn't. He couldn't manage to take the image out of his mind that they had both made a terrible mistake. _"Starfire…I don't know if I can…answer…that right…now."_ He replied slowly, carefully.

She wiped a stray tear away. _"You do not…know?"_ she spat. _"I believe I have made a poor choice, and I am truly apologetic that I—"_ She could not complete her sentence, and she could not look at him twice. Her shame shaded her like a thundering storm cloud as she drifted into her room and Robin stumbled into his own. And then the cruel games began when the first cry carried itself into his room.

Robin had a faint idea of what could have happened if he had not had the good sense to pull away before his average teenage boy personality kicked in. Many boys in the City would have done anything for the chance to intoxicate themselves with the love of a pretty face and breath in the gaseous fumes of a broken heart that was so easily fooled. Starfire may not have been as unknowing as she appeared, but she still didn't have the whole picture of what Robin really felt and what his good sense demanded him to do. He still loved her. Her miserable, humiliated cries still murmured through the hall, even after Raven went into to investigate the cause of the late-night disturbance. Robin never heard a knock on his door, and he never was the one to knock on another's door. Two hearts were shredded that evening, and were never truly stitched back together properly. Cupid's arrows missed and crashed and burned in some other location far away from the Tower. On the first Valentine's Day after the mishap, Robin barricaded the door to the training room as he took out his frustration on a punching bag, and Starfire locked herself in her room with the soap opera channel. Strength was something they chose not to take, but their hearts eventually recovered with few messy stitches of thread in a feeble attempt to heal the heartache. Their friendship resumed, but never truly felt as comfortable as it had before Starfire took her chance. Robin never knocked on her door. She never stood outside his. The memory flickered until it went out almost completely one night; long after the Titans had taken their separate ways. Robin still felt the sweet sensation that she had left with her affection, and Starfire still reflected on the loneliness that surrounded her and the rejection that crowded her when he pulled away. Perhaps one day their roads would cross again, paved in loss, and their nearly forgotten spark of what could have formed into a relationship would evolve into a flame. They could fall back in love…

And maybe he wouldn't pull away again.

_We're intoxicated with venom…_

…_And poisoned with love._

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